People are trying to have better conversations about death rather than resorting to platitudes or avoidance. This is good.
But Fraser is a bit misleading when he talks about cost as motivation for these conversations:
My own religious perspective on death and dying is that secular atheism is proving to be a very expensive and a terrible burden on the NHS. When we come to value life simply in terms of itself and “the amount of self-referential advancement obtained in it”, as one commentator has put it, then death is seen as doubly frightening because it strikes not just at life itself, which is bad enough, but at the very core of our value system. Medicine thus shoulders the unreasonable burden of justifying our existence. So we charge the medics to do everything they can to keep us alive. And the bills pile up.
He suggests that non-religious people are driving increasing end of life care costs. While I won’t argue that atheists don’t fight to stay alive, religious people are more likely to opt for aggressive (and expensive) end of life care.